Summary
So Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, in a nutshell, it works similar to Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure, allowing us to store vast quantities of data in the cloud but does it for 1/4th the cost of your typical object storage provider.
Because B2 doesn’t include any client software to interface with any time we access the storage we need to use either the web GUI, API or CLI. In the case of Veeam, this means we need to rely on a ‘cloud gateway’ which there are several options available that are compatible with B2, in this particular article, I have explored configuring a Synology DS1812 with the CloudSync package.
Other options I would consider would involve leveraging CloudBerry for small to medium businesses and even GoodSync for smaller mom and pop style shops for sending Veeam backups into B2. For larger businesses, I would only consider a VTL cloud gateway device that can leverage B2 for the backend storage. At this stage though, I am not aware of any VTL devices compatible with B2.
Dealing with object storage can be quite tricky with Veeam, it must be noted that this not a problem of the object storage but because of the way Veeam writes files and handles its files. While we can configure our backup jobs in a particular fashion to eliminate operations such as synthetic fulls and transforms which are not object storage friendly, it is just simply not a very eloquent solution.
Currently, the best option for sending large amounts of Veeam backups data into cloud object storage is still using a VTL cloud gateway device.
Worth mentioning is that Veeam Backup & Replication v10 is going to support native integration with object storage, support will include AWS S3/Glacier & Swift along with Microsoft Azure BLOB being announced.
So back to CloudSync and B2, what can we accomplish with Veeam backups? Well, for starters, we can send our Veeam backup files off-site for a very cheap price. When it’s setup correctly it can work pretty well and deliver an extra layer of redundancy to our data availability strategy. By utilising the added protection that B2 offers around the lifecycle rules will add an extra safeguard against ransomware which is a huge bonus as well.
Pay particular attention to the scheduling though. If this is misconfigured, backup files may be incomplete or even corrupt.
The benefit of CloudSync with B2 over using other cloud gateway devices available today would be the cost savings that B2 can offer compared to S3 and BLOB. If customers have existing skills in managing a Synology NAS, it can be very tempting to simply add an extra package from the Synology store and be up in running in less than an hour.
Introduction
Phase 1 – Create the Backblaze B2 Bucket
Phase 2 – Install and Configure Synology CloudSync
Phase 3 – Configure Veeam Backup Repository
Phase 4 – Create the Veeam Backup Job
Phase 5 – Testing and Tuning
Summary